I’ve made a dog’s breakfast of some of the last few dinners I’ve cooked for my family.
There was the pork loin that I pulled too soon after failing to temp properly. We wound up eating ham sandwiches instead while it finished cooking and went directly to becoming leftovers. There were chicken legs that I flipped too frequently on the grill, and the charcoal died down before they were cooked all the way through. I didn’t take enough time to fully sweat the vegetables for a minestrone before adding in the broth, meaning we had to boil everything longer.
Dena could see the common thread: I was following recipes too closely. I was looking at recommended times without stepping back to make sure that I was accomplishing the goal of that step of the recipe.
I’ve been rushing. We’ve been spending so much time for the last few weeks reminding our five-and-a-half-year-old daughter that she needs to be patient, yet I completely missed my own impatience.
I was trying to make the recipes conform to the written time instead of accepting that they’ll be ready when they’re ready.
When I cook a meal I have down cold, I know what I’m looking for. With those meals, I don’t set a lot of timers. I can tell by texture, or smell, or any number of little indicators that I’ve learned to watch for.
I know how to let the food tell me when it’s ready.
That waiting is important, because if you decide ahead of time how long you need to cook a chicken, your family winds up with salmonella on their plates.
It’s only natural to want to know how long things are going to take when we start them. The mind sees something starting and begins imagining what completion is going to look like.
We’re narrative creatures, and we want to get to the end of the story.
And all this gets me thinking about the bigger picture of the moment.
Right now, as we wait for the relaxing of social distancing and a view of what normal is going to look like for the conceivable future, there are plenty of people who want to conform to a set time table.
There are even people who want to demand we end things now: That we’ve done enough and it’s time to move on. That their impatience and personal freedom is more important than following the indicators of the virus and our responsibilities to each other.
But if we rush to try and return to what things were like before, to make the new normal as close to the old normal as fast as possible, we’re liable to wind up causing more harm.
You can’t tell a virus when it’s done spreading any more than you can demand for chicken legs to temp exactly when you want them to be done. You can’t make the natural world re-order itself according to your impatience.
We need to pay attention to the worthwhile indicators, and accept that things will be ready according to their time, not ours.
It’s an idea worth carrying beyond These Uncertain Times™ and into our daily life. Your willpower can help you get things done, but your willpower and efforts cannot enforce the desired consequences of your actions.
All you can control is what you put out into the world. The rest is up to the actions and reactions of others.
All you can control is what you do and how patient you are for the results.
This Builds Character 